Are we a better team under MP?

Indeed. Cortese effectively did Nigel a favour. He'll go down in Saints history as one of the best managers we ever had.

 

I suppose none of the "Cortese made the worst decision in history" crew have seen the poll yet? 37-0 is a pretty strong start.

 

45 - 0 now!

 

Expected a heavy yes but this is quite surprising!

 

Have to be Honest , I have been eating humble pie for quite a while now .

 

Did you really expect anyone to say we aren't playing better? If anyone did, it would be a supporter of another team.

 

52 - 0 not decisive yet then, skates must be on holiday?

 

For the pressing style NC apparently wants to play, MP is definitely better. The spacing and team organization has improved markedly with MP. We are much more able to play from the back and our midfielders tend to get bunched together less. It's fairly obvious to me. Also, this is the style that NC seems to want for us to play. So whether the formation or tactics is right in the long-term is somewhat less important than that everyone is on the same page. If it doesn't work, then maybe we'll have to rethink things but at least we're giving it a go. NA was playing more of a traditional and defensive "ugly" tactic.

I think we also have to give MP credit for his work developing players. Jay Rodriguez looks much better. And while I love JWP long-term, I still have a heart attack every time he comes on. But we are doing okay AND JWP is gaining a lot of experience, which wasn't happening so much with Adkins.

OTOH, I hesitate to criticize NA. We were playing pretty well towards the end of his time. We drew against a tougher Chelsea lineup away at Stamford Bridge so I think we could have beaten this Chelsea lineup home at St. Mary's. And it's not like Saints ever played hoofball. We were always quite pretty in L1 and Championship. I think it was more that NA had struck upon a formula that-- while it wasn't optimal in some ways-- he felt would have kept us up. And I think he was right about that, and I can't fault him at all with sticking with that as survival is paramount.

We would have been less likely to beat Man City and Liverpool under NA, but I also think we would probably have done better against QPR and Newcastle. It was a bold move to replace Adkins and a bolder move to switch philosophies so drastically and even now that things are working out, I still question whether this couldn't have waited until the season ended.

What we also don't know is whether NA would have then made some adjustments in the offseason to get us playing more of the style we're playing now. I feel fairly confident he would have. But I also feel like it would have been to a lesser degree as Pochettino is pretty extreme about it.

In the end, I think the important thing I take away from this is that NC's move cannot be deemed rash. He may very well have been correct that MP is better for this side than NA. At worst, it was a bold but calculated risk that appears to be paying off. I've regained a lot of trust back in NC and that is more important than who manages the club. Managers can always be sacked, much harder to change chairman.

 

And CBK.

 

Yes. Better substitutions and better tactics.

 

Yes, that is all!

P.s. still love Nigel

 

64. Really? Not even one pain in the arse contrarian voter? That's normally me on polls, but even I couldn't do it this time.

 

I know it doesn't purely cover MP's spell, but here is the league table since November the 10th....

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There you go.

 

Two dissenters....Nicola knows where you live!

 

How about a league table since Mauricio took over? We have 12 points from 9 games, which must be mid table at least.

 

The top ten is how I think next season's table will look like, that will represent tremendous progress at the end of the original 5 year plan.

 

66-2 now. Come on then, are the two who voted no going to come out and say it was them?

 

Nigel Adkins and Andy Crosby, Dean Wilkins is yet to vote.

 

I'm glad somebody did! I think the other one must be CBK.

If anyone's genuinely going to vote no, I'd be very interested to hear why.